Flow-alignment of sheared nematic polymers occurs in various flow-concentration regimes. Analytical descriptions of shear-aligned nematic monodomains have a long history across continuum, mesoscopic and mean-field kinetic models, sacrificing precision at each finer scale. Continuum Leslie-Ericksen theory applies to highly concentrated, weak flows of small molecular weight polymers, giving an ex...

The kinetic theory developed in [1] for solutions of nonhomogeneous nematic liquid crystalline polymers (LCPs) of spheroidal molecular configurations is extended to account for the translational diffusion and the related spatial density variation. The new theory augments the effect of the density variation to the intermolecular potential, Smoluchowski equation and the elastic stress. It account...